My Rights as a Gamer

I've read disturbing articles about politicians bringing the game industry to court over their M-rated games, how they are an intolerable influence to children and that they are completely inappropriate to play. First off,THAT'S WHY they are M-rated in the first place. The music industry has faced similar scrutiny in the past, having their albums stamped with parental advisory warnings for profanity, explicit lyrics etc. An M-rated game is no more influential than an R-rated movie or a parental advisory music album. This issue is really up to the parents as it has always been. Truth be told, most of my games are M-rated and it is my God-given right as a United States citizen to play them!

Please post your thoughts on this issue.

They just want a way out or to use it just like how the liberals are using the Saturday shooting to ban words and images.

Games are rated by the ESRB. Rating a game is optional. Selling an M, AO, or even unrated game to a minor is perfectly legal. There are no legal reprecussions for the doing so. Companies, like gamestop, voluntarily submit themselves to be fined by the ESRB if they are caught.

There are no laws specific to gaming. Politicians are trying to instate it as a federal law. Game companies desperately don't want this and are trying to prove to the government that they are "good boys" because they can be self regulated. They hate the ESRB, but its the much lesser of two evils given the vultures of a new federal bureau that would likely reduce the speed of ratings and significantly up the fines to create a source of revenue.

EDIT: You have no rights. They aren't rights if they can be taken away from you. Those are privilages. And they can be taken away.

Along with that, if you have a console you really dont own any of your games.

In a lot of cases politicians are using games as a punching bag and claiming they are doing it to protect the kids. It reality they are probably doing it to make themselves look good without taking any political risk. They want to keep their job without doing their job.

Soon or later its going to happen. Get used to it. Chances are good it will look a lot like the parental warning stickers on music.

Playing games without federal interferance is not a right. If you want to talk about gamer rights a better topic would be the right to play a game on release free of major bugs that I just paid $50+to purchase.

I'm pretty young by gamer standards. I play games like GTA, Assassin's Creed, Unreal Tournament, but yet I'm perfectly sane and I don't want to go around killing people. I don't understand why they're trying to do this but whatever.

I just don't want additional regulations to drive up the cost of games.

As a gamer who does not need to worry about any of the ratings, it doesn't bother me in the least. Some games should not be sold to kids.

No matter what country you live in, I believe it is the right of any government elected officials to do what they believe is right for their people. If you don't like it, vote them out next time. Find a party that has a good policy towards games. Sure it sucks that a lot of the problems in the past have had a direct link to video games, but that's the way things go sometimes.

In my opinion, the people who have problems with gaming, are the same people who think that ALL games are just like GTA. 'Why should kids be allowed to just go around shooting people and beating up prostitutes?'

The realism of games now a days also does not help our cause. When people see you shooting or running over someone in a game that looks almost photo-realistic, they get scared that you are wanting to do this in real life.

Let's just hope that no one finds a way to play the discs backwards to find our hidden messages for world domination. :twisted:

Things will never change as long as the detractors of gaming never actually play one.

It's just all the moms and old people that hate videogames for whatever reason. Then politicians try to take advantage of this by promising to make ratings and laws much stricter around them.

It's all a bunch of BS, and it always will be.

I think it wouldn't be a bad idea if the gaming industry adopted the AO rating for some games and avoid any more issues regarding age.

video games are just the newest thing to blame some of our problems as a society on. Most people would much rather say "ZOMG video games! are turning kids into murderers!!!" then question our parenting witch is the real problem. NOT ****ing video games!dkdk999